 Book 3, Chapter 1, Part 2 of 2 of THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED. Defeat. March in the country around was rare with Jasmine and Johnquills and patches of violets in the warming grass. Afterward he remembered especially one afternoon of such a fresh and magic glamour that as he stood in the rifle pit marking targets he recited Atlanta in Caledon to an uncomprehending pole, his voice mingling with the rip, sing and splatter of bullets overhead. When the hounds of spring, spang, are on winter's traces, were the mother of months, hey come to mark three. In town the streets were in a sleepy dream again and together Anthony and Dot idled in their own tracks of the previous autumn until he began to feel a drowsy attachment for this south. A south it seemed more of Algiers than of Italy, with faded aspirations pointing back over innumerable generations to some warm primitive nirvana without hope or care. Here there was an inflection of cordiality, of comprehension in every voice. Life plays the same lovely and agonizing joke on all of us. They seem to say in their plaintive, pleasant cadence, in the rising inflection terminating on an unresolved minor. He liked his barbershop, where he was, high corporal, to a pale, emaciated young man who shaved him and pushed a cool vibrating machine endlessly over his insatiable head. He liked Johnston's gardens, where they danced, where a tragic negro made yearning aching music on a saxophone until the Garrish Hall became an enchanted jungle of barbaric rhythms and smoky laughter, where to forget the uneventful passage of time upon Dorothy's soft sighs and tender whisperings was the consummation of all aspiration, of all content. There was an undertone of sadness in her character, a conscious evasion of all except the pleasurable minutiae of life. Her violet eyes would remain for hours apparently insensit, as, thoughtful and reckless, she basks like a cat in the sun. He wondered what the tired, spiritless mother thought of them, and whether in her moments of uttermost cynicism she ever guessed at their relationship. On Sunday afternoons they walked along the countryside, resting in intervals on the dry moths in the outskirts of a wood. Here the birds had gathered, and the clusters of violets in white dogwood. Here the whore trees shone crystalline and cool, oblivious to the intoxicating heat that waited outside. Here he would talk, intermittently, in a sleepy monologue, in a conversation of no significance, of no replies. July came scorching down. Captain Dunning was ordered to detail one of his men to learn blacksmithing. The regiment was filling up to war strength, and he needed most of his veterans for drillmasters, so he selected the little Italian, Baptiste, whom he could most easily spare. Little Baptiste had never had anything to do with horses. His fear made matters worse. He reappeared in the orderly room one day, and told Captain Dunning that he wanted to die if he couldn't be relieved. The horses kicked at him, he said. He was no good at the work. Finally he fell on his knees in besought Captain Dunning, in a mixture of broken English and scriptural Italian, to get him out of it. He had not slept for three days, monstrous stallions reared and cavorted through his dreams. Captain Dunning reproved the company clerk, who had burst out laughing, and told Baptiste he would do what he could. But when he thought it over, he decided that he couldn't spare a better man. Little Baptiste went from bad to worse. The horses seemed to divine his fear and take every advantage of it. Two weeks later a great black mare crushed his skull in with her hoofs, while he was trying to lead her from her stall. In mid-July came rumours, and then orders, that concerned a change of camp. The brigade was to move to an empty 100 miles farther south, there to be expanded into a division. At first the men thought they were departing for the trenches, and all evening little groups jabbered in the company street, shouting to each other in swaggering exclamations. When the truth leaked out, it was rejected indignantly as a blind to conceal their real destination. They reveled in their own importance. That night they told their girls in town that they were going to get the Germans. Anthony circulated for a while among the groups, then stopping a jitney, rode down to tell Dot that he was going away. She was waiting on the dark veranda in a cheap white dress that accentuated the youth and softness of her face. Oh, she whispered, I've wanted you so, honey, all this day. I have something to tell you. She drew him down beside her on the swinging seat, not noticing his ominous tone. Tell me. We're leaving next week. Her arms, seeking his shoulders, remained poised upon the dark air, her chin tipped up. When she spoke, the softness was gone from her voice. Leaving for France? No, less luck than that, leaving for some darn camp in Mississippi. She shut her eyes, and he could see that their lives were trembling. Dear little Dot, life is so damned hard. She was crying upon his shoulder. So damned hard, he repeated aimlessly. So damned hard. It just hurts people and hurts people until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever anymore. That's the last and worst thing it does. Frantic, wild with anguish, she strained him to her breast. Oh God! she whispered brokenly. You can't go away from me. I'd die. He was finding it impossible now to pass off his departure as a common, impersonal blow. He was too near to her to do more than repeat poor little Dot, poor little Dot. And then what? she demanded wearily. What do you mean? You're my whole life, that's all. I'd die for you right now if you said so. I'd get a knife and kill myself. You can't leave me here. Her tone frightened him. These things happen, he said evenly. Then I'm going with you. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her mouth was trembling in an ecstasy of grief and fear. Sweet, he muttered sentimentally. Sweet little girl, don't you see we'd just be putting off what's bound to happen? I'll be going to France in a few months. She leaned away from him and, clinching her fists, lifted her face toward the sky. I want to die, she said, as if molding each word carefully in her heart. Dot. He whispered uncomfortably. You'll forget. Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know, because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hands. All right. Absorbed in himself, he continued. I've often thought that if I hadn't got what I wanted, things might have been different with me. I might have found something in my mind and enjoyed putting it in circulation. I might have been content with the work of it, and had some sweet vanity out of the success. I suppose that at one time I could have had anything I wanted within reason, but that was the only thing I ever wanted with any fervor, God. And that taught me you can't have anything, you can't have anything at all, because desire just cheats you. It's like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and guilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it. But when we do, the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you've got the inconsequential part. The glitter that made you want it is gone. He broke off uneasily. She had risen and was standing, dry-eyed, picking little leaves from a dark vine. Dot. Go away. She said coldly. What? Why? I don't want just words. If that's all you have for me, you'd better go. Why, Dot, what's death to me is just a lot of words to you. You put them together so pretty. I'm sorry, I was talking about you, Dot. Go away from here. He approached her with arms outstretched, but she held him away. You don't want me to go with you, she said evenly, because you're going to meet that girl. She could not bring herself to say wife. How do I know? Well, then, I reckon you're not my fellow any more, so go away. For a moment, while conflicting warnings and desires prompted Anthony, it seemed one of those rare times when he would take a step prompted from within. He hesitated. Then a wave of weariness broke against him. It was too late. Everything was too late. For years now he had dreamed the world away, basing his decisions upon emotions unstable as water. The little girl in the white dress dominated him, as she approached beauty in the hard symmetry of her desire. The fire blazing in her dark and injured heart seemed to glow around her like a flame. With some profound and uncharted pride, she had made herself remote and so achieved her purpose. I didn't mean to seem so callous, Dot. It don't matter. The fire rolled over Anthony. Something wrenched at his bowels, and he stood there helpless and beaten. Come with me, Dot. Little loving Dot. Oh, come with me. I couldn't leave you now. With a sob she wound her arms around him and let him support her weight while the moon at its perennial labour of covering the bad complexion of the world showed its illicit honey over the jousy street. The Catastrophe Early September in Camp Boone, Mississippi. The darkness, alive with insects, beat in upon the mosquito netting beneath the shelter of which Anthony was trying to write a letter. An intermittent chatter over a poker game was going on in the next tent, and outside a man was strolling up the company street singing a current bit of doggerel about c-c-c-cady. With an effort Anthony hoisted himself to his elbow and, pencil in hand, looked down at his blank sheet of paper. Then, omitting any heading, he began. I can't imagine what the matter is, Gloria. I haven't had a line from you for two weeks, and it's only natural to be worried. He threw this away with a disturbed grunt and began again. I don't know what to think, Gloria. Your last letter, short, cold, without a word of affection or even a decent account of what you've been doing, came two weeks ago. It's only natural that I should wonder. If your love for me isn't absolutely dead, it seems that you'd at least keep me from worry. Again he crumpled the page and tossed it angrily through a tear in the tent wall, realizing simultaneously that he would have to pick it up in the morning. He felt disinclined to try again. He could get no warmth into the lines, only a persistent jealousy and suspicion. Since mid-summer these discrepancies and Gloria's correspondence had grown more and more noticeable. At first he had scarcely perceived them. He so enured to the perfunctory, dearest and darlings, scattered through her letters, that he was oblivious to their presence or absence. But in this last fortnight he had become increasingly aware that there was something amiss. He had sent her a night-letter, saying that he had passed his examinations for an officer's training camp and expected to leave for Georgia shortly. She had not answered. He had wired again. When he received no word he imagined that she might be out of town. But it occurred and recurred to him that she was not out of town, in a series of distraught imaginings began to plague him. Supposing Gloria, bored and restless, had found someone, even as he had, the thought terrified him with its possibility. It was chiefly because he had been so sure of her personal integrity that he had considered her so sparingly during the year. And now, as a doubt was born, the old angers, the rages of possession, swarmed back a thousandfold. What more natural than that she should be in love again. He remembered the Gloria who promised that, should she ever want anything, she would take it, insisting that, since she would act entirely for her own satisfaction, she could go through such an affair unsmerched. It was only the effect on a person's mind that counted, anyhow. She said, and her reaction would be the masculine one, of satiation and faint dislike. But that had been when they were first married. Later, with the discovery that she could be jealous of Anthony, she had, outwardly at least, changed her mind. There were no other men in the world for her. This he had known only too early. Perceiving that a certain fastidiousness would restrain her, he had grown lax in preserving the completeness of her love, which, after all, was the keystone of the entire structure. Meanwhile, all through the summer, he had been maintaining Dott in a boarding-house downtown. To do this, it had been necessary to write to his broker for money. Dott had covered her journey south by leaving her house a day before the brigade broke camp, informing her mother in a note that she had gone to New York. On the evening following, Anthony had called as though to see her. Mrs. Raycroft was in a state of collapse, and there was a policeman in the parlor, a questionnaire had ensued, from which Anthony had extricated himself with some difficulty. In September, with his suspicions of Gloria, the company of Dott had become tedious, then almost intolerable. He was nervous and irritable from lack of sleep, his heart was sick and afraid. Three days ago he had gone to Captain Dunning and asked for a furlough only to be met with benign and procrastination. The division was starting overseas, while Anthony was going to an officer's training camp, what furloughs could be given must go to the men who were leaving the country. Upon this refusal Anthony had started to the telegraph office, intending to wire Gloria to come south. He reached the door and receded despairingly, seeing the utter impracticality of such a move. Then he had spent the evening quarreling irritably with Dott, and returned to camp morose and angry with the world. There had been a disagreeable scene, in the midst of which he had precipitately departed. What was to be done with her did not seem to concern him vitally at present. He was completely absorbed in the disheartening silence of his wife. The flap of the tent made a sudden triangle back upon itself, and a dark head appeared against the night. Sergeant Patch? The accent was Italian, and Anthony saw by the belt that the man was a headquarters orderly. Want me? Lady, call up headquarters ten minutes ago. Say she have speak with you, very important. Anthony swept aside the mosquito netting and stood up. It might be a wire from Gloria, telephoned over. She say to get you, she call again ten o'clock. All right, thanks. He picked up his hat, and in a moment was striding beside the orderly, through the hot, almost suffocating darkness. Over in the headquarters shack, he saluted a dozing night-surface officer. Sit down and wait. Suggested the lieutenant nonchalantly. Girl seemed awful anxious to speak to you. Anthony's hopes fell away. Thank you very much, sir. And as the phone squeaked on the sidewall, he knew who was calling. This is Dot, came an unsteady voice. I've got to see you. Dot, I told you I couldn't get down for several days. I've got to see you tonight. It's important. It's too late, he said coldly. It's ten o'clock, and I have to be in camp at eleven. All right. There was so much wretchedness compressed into the two words, that Anthony felt a measure of compunction. What's the matter? I want to tell you good-bye. Oh, don't be a little idiot, he exclaimed, but his spirits rose. What luck if she should leave town this very night! What a burden from his soul! But he said, you can't possibly leave before to-morrow. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the night-service officer regarding him quizzically. Then, startlingly, came Dot's next words. I don't mean leave that way. Anthony's hand clutched the receiver fiercely. He felt his nerves turning cold, as if the heat was leaving his body. What? Then quickly, in a wild, broken voice, he heard, Good-bye, oh, good-bye! Col-oop! She had hung up the receiver, with a sound that was half a gasp, half a cry, Anthony hurried from the headquarters building. Outside, under the stars that dripped like silver tassels through the trees of the little grove, he stood motionless, hesitating. Had she meant to kill herself? Oh, the little fool! He was filled with bitter hate toward her. In this dénouement he found it impossible to realize that he had ever begun such an entanglement, such a mess, a sordid melange of worry and pain. He found himself walking slowly away, repeating over and over that it was futile to worry. He had best go back to his tent and sleep. He needed sleep, God. Would he ever sleep again? His mind was in a vast clamour and confusion. As he reached the road, he turned around in a panic and began running, not toward his company, but away from it. Men were returning now. He could find a taxi cab. After a minute, two yellow eyes appeared around to bend. Desperately he ran toward them. Jitney! Jitney! It was an empty ford. I want to go to town. Cost you a dollar. All right, if you'll just hurry. After an interminable time he ran up the steps of a dark, ramshackle little house and through the door, almost knocking over an immense negress who was walking, candle in hand, along the hall. Where's my wife? he cried wildly. She gone to bed. Up the stairs, three at a time, down the creaking passage. The room was dark and silent and with trembling fingers he struck a match. Two wide eyes looked up at him from a wretched ball of clothes on the bed. Ah, I knew you'd come. She murmured brokenly. Anthony grew cold with anger. So it was just a plan to get me down here, get me in trouble. He said, God damn it, you've shouted wolf once too often. She regarded him pitifully. I had to see you. I couldn't have lived. Oh, I had to see you. He sat down on the side of the bed and slowly shook his head. You're no good, he said decisively, talking unconsciously, as Gloria might have talked to him. This sort of thing isn't fair to me, you know. Come closer. Whatever he might say, Dot was happy now. He cared for her. She had brought him to her side. Oh, God! said Anthony hopelessly. As weariness rolled along its inevitable wave, his anger subsided, receded, vanished. He collapsed suddenly, felt sobbing beside her on the bed. Oh, my darling! she begged him. Don't cry. Oh, don't cry. She took his head upon her breast and soothed him. Mingled her happy tears with the bitterness of his. Her hand played gently with his dark hair. I'm such a little fool, she murmured brokenly, but I love you, and when you're cold to me it seems as if it isn't worthwhile to go on living. After all, this was peace. The quiet room with the mingled scent of women's powder and perfume. Dot's hand soft as a warm wind upon his hair. The rise and fall of her bosom as she took breath. For a moment it was as though it were Gloria there, as though he were at rest in some sweeter and safer home than he had ever known. An hour passed. A clock began to chime in the hall. He jumped to his feet and looked at the phosphorescent hands of his wristwatch. It was twelve o'clock. He had trouble in finding a taxi that would take him out at that hour. As he urged the driver faster along the road, he speculated on the best method of entering camp. He had been late several times recently, and he knew that, where he caught again, his name would probably be stricken from the list of officer candidates. He wondered if he had better not dismiss the taxi and take a chance on passing the sentry in the dark. Still, officers often rode past the sentries after midnight. Halt! The monosyllable came from the yellow glare that the headlights dropped upon the changing road. The taxi driver threw out his clutch and his sentry walked up, carrying his rifle at the port. With him, by an ill chance, was an officer of the guard. Out late, Sergeant? Yes, sir. Got delayed. Too bad. Have to take your name. As the officer waited, notebook and pencil in hand, something not fully intended crowded to Anthony's lips, something born of panic, of muddle, of despair. Sergeant R. A. Foley, he answered breathlessly. And the outfit? Company Q. 83rd Infantry. All right, you'll have to walk from here, Sergeant. Anthony saluted, quickly paid his taxi driver, and set off for a run toward the regiment he had named. When he was out of sight, he changed his course, and with his heart beating wildly, hurried to his company, feeling that he had made a fatal error of judgment. Two days later, the officer who had been in command of the guard recognized him in a barbershop downtown. In charge of a military policeman, he was taken back to the camp, where he was reduced to the ranks without trial, and confined for a month to the limits of his company street. With this blow, a spell of utter depression overtook him, and within a week he was again caught downtown, wandering around in drunken days, with a pint of bootleg whiskey in his hip pocket. It was because of a sort of craziness in his behavior at the trial, that his sentence to the guard-house was for only three weeks. Nightmare. Early in his confinement, the conviction took root in him that he was going mad. It was as though there were a quantity of dark, yet vivid personalities in his mind, some of them familiar, some of them strange and terrible, held in check by a little monitor who sat aloft somewhere and looked on. The thing that worried him was that the monitor was sick and holding out with difficulty. Should he give up, should he falter for a moment, out would rush these intolerable things. Only Anthony could know what a state of blackness there would be if the worst of him could roam his consciousness unchecked. The heat of the day had changed, somehow, until it was a burnished darkness crushing down upon a devastated land. Over his head the blue circles of ominous uncharted suns of unnumbered centers of fire revolved interminably before his eyes as though he were lying constantly exposed to the hot light and in a state of feverish coma. At seven in the morning something phantasmal, something almost absurdly unreal that he knew was his mortal body, went out with seven other prisoners and two guards to work on the camp roads. One day they loaded and unloaded quantities of gravel, spread it, raked it. The next day they worked with huge barrels of red-hot tar, flooding the gravel with black, shining pools of molten heat. At night, locked up in the guardhouse, he would lie without thought, without courage to compass thought, staring at the irregular beams of the ceiling overhead until about three o'clock when he would slip into a broken, troubled sleep. During the work hours he labored with uneasy haste, attempting, as the day bore toward the sultry Mississippi sunset, to tire himself physically so that in the evening he might sleep deeply from utter exhaustion. Then one afternoon, the second week, he had a feeling that two eyes were watching him from a place a few feet beyond one of the guards. This aroused him to a sort of terror. He turned his back on the eyes and shoveled feverishly until it became necessary for him to face about and go for more gravel. Then they entered his vision again, and his already-taught nerves tightened up to the breaking point. The eyes were leering at him. Out of a hot silence he heard his name called in a tragic voice, and the earth tipped absurdly back and forth to a babble of shouting and confusion. When next he became conscious he was back in the guardhouse and the other prisoners were throwing him curious glances. The eyes returned no more. It was many days before he realized the voice must have been dots that she had called out to him and made some sort of disturbance. He decided this just previous to the expiration of his sentence when the cloud that oppressed him had lifted leaving him in a deep, dispirited lethargy. As the conscious mediator, the monitor who kept that fearsome melange of horror, grew stronger, Anthony became physically weaker. He was scarcely able to get through the two days of toil, and when he was released one rainy afternoon, and returned to his company, he reached his tent only to fall into a heavy dose, from which he awoke before dawn aching and unrefreshed. Beside his cot were two letters that had been awaiting him in the orderly tent for some time. The first was from Gloria. It was short and cool. The case is coming to trial late in November. Can you possibly get leave? I've tried to write you again and again, but it just seems to make things worse. I want to see you about several matters, but you know that you have once prevented me from coming, and I am disinclined to try again. In view of a number of things it seems necessary that we have a conference. I'm very glad about your appointment. Gloria. He was too tired to try to understand, or to care. Her phrases, her intentions, were all very far away in an incomprehensible past. At the second letter he scarcely glanced. It was from Dott, an incoherent, tear-swollen scrawl, a flood of protest, endearment, and grief. After a pause he let it slip from his inert hand, and drowsed back into a nebulous hinterland of his own. At drill-call he awoke with a high fever, and fainted when he tried to leave his tent. At noon he was sent to the base hospital with influenza. He was aware that this sickness was providential. It saved him from a hysterical relapse, and he recovered in time to entrain on a damp November day for New York and for the interminable massacre beyond. When the regiment reached Camp Mills, Long Island, Anthony's single idea was to get into the city and see Gloria as soon as possible. It was now evident that an armistice would be signed within the week, but rumor had it that, in any case, troops would continue to be shipped to France until the last moment. Anthony was appalled at the notion of the long voyage, of the tedious debarkation at a French port, of being kept abroad for a year, possibly, to replace the troops who had seen actual fighting. His intention had been to obtain a two-day furlough, but Camp Mills proved to be under a strict influenza quarantine. It was impossible for even an officer to leave, except on official business. For a private it was out of the question. The camp itself was a dreary muddle, cold, windswept and filthy, with the accumulated dirt incident to the passage through of many divisions. Their train came in at seven one night, and they waited in line until one, while a military tangle was straightened out somewhere ahead. Officers ran up and down ceaselessly, calling orders and making a great uproar. It turned out that the trouble was due to the Colonel, who was in a righteous temper because he was a west pointer and the war was going to stop before he could get overseas. Had the militant governments realized the number of broken hearts among the older west pointers during that week, they would indubitably have prolonged the slaughter another month, the thing was pitiable. Gazing out at the bleak expanse of tents, extending for miles over a trodden welter of slush and snow, Anthony saw the impracticality of trudging to a telephone that night. He would call her at the first opportunity in the morning. Aroused in the chill and bitter dawn, he stood at Reveley and listened to a passionate harangue from Captain Dunning. You men may think the war is over. Well, let me tell you it isn't. Those fellows aren't going to go sign the armistice. It's another trick, and we'd be crazy to let anything slacken up here in the company because, let me tell you, we're going to sail from here within a week, and when we do, we're going to see some real fighting. He paused that they might get the full effect of his pronouncement. And then, if you think the war is over, just talk to anyone who's been in it and see if they think the Germans are all in. They don't. Nobody does. I've talked to the people that know, and they say there'll be, anyways, a year longer of war. They don't think it's over. So you men better not get any foolish ideas that it is. Doubly stressing this final admonition, he ordered the company dismissed. At noon, Anthony set off at a run for the nearest canteen telephone. As he approached what corresponded to the downtown of the camp, he noticed that many other soldiers were running also, that a man near him had suddenly leaped into the air and clicked his heels together. The tendency to run became general, and from little excited groups here and there came the sounds of cheering. He stopped and listened. Over the cold country, whistles were blowing and the chimes of the Garden City churches broke suddenly into reverberatory sound. Anthony began to run again. The cries were clear and distinct now as they rose with clouds of frosted breath into the chilly air. Germany surrendered! Germany surrendered! The false armistice. That evening, in the opaque gloom of six o'clock, Anthony slipped between two freight cars and once over the railroad followed the track along to Garden City, where he caught an electric train from New York. He stood some chance of apprehension. He knew that the military police were often sent through the cars to ask for passes, but he imagined that tonight the vigilance would be relaxed. But in any event he would have tried to slip through, for he had been unable to locate Gloria by telephone and another day of suspense would have been intolerable. After inexplicable stops and waits that reminded him of the night he had left New York over a year before, they drew into the Pennsylvania station and he followed the familiar way to the taxi stand, finding it grotesque and oddly stimulating to give his own address. Broadway was a riot of light, thronged as he had never seen it with a carnival crowd, which swept its glittering way through scraps of paper piled ankle deep on the sidewalks. Here and there, elevated upon benches and boxes, soldiers addressed the heedless mass, each face in which was clear cut and distinct under the white glare overhead. Anthony picked out half a dozen figures, a drunken sailor, tipped backward and supported by two other gobs, was waving his hat and emitting a wild series of wars. A wounded soldier, crutch in hand, was born along in an eddy of shoulders of some shrieking civilians. A dark-haired girl sat cross-legged and meditative on top of a parked taxi cab. Here, surely, the victory had come in time, the climax had been scheduled with the uttermost celestial foresight. The great, rich nation had made triumphant war, suffered enough for poignancy, but not enough for bitterness. Hence the carnival, the feasting, the triumph. Under these bright lights glittered the faces of peoples whose glory had long since passed away, whose very civilizations were dead. Men whose ancestors had heard the news of victory in Babylon, in Nineveh, in Baghdad, entire, a hundred generations before. Men whose ancestors had seen a flower-decked, slave-adorned cartage drift with its wake of captives down the avenues of Imperial Rome. Past the Rialto, the glittering front of the Aster, the jeweled magnificence of Times Square, a gorgeous alley of incandescents ahead, then, was it years later? He was paying the taxi driver in front of a white building on 57th Street. He was in the hall, ah, there was the Negro boy from Martinique, lazy, indolent, unchanged. Is Mrs. Patch in? I have just come on, sir. The man announced with his incongruous British accent. Take me up. Then the slow drone of the elevator, the three steps to the door which swung open at the impetus of his knock. Gloria? His voice was trembling. No answer. A faint string of smoke was rising from a cigarette tray. A number of vanity fair sat a straddle on the table. Gloria! He ran into the bathroom, the bath. She was not there. A negligee of robin's egg blue laid out upon the bed, diffused a faint perfume, elusive and familiar. On a chair were a pair of stockings in a street dress, an open powder box yawned upon the bureau. She must have just gone out. The telephone rang abruptly and he started, answered it with all the sensations of an imposter. Hello, is Mrs. Patch there? No, I'm looking for her myself. Who is this? This is Mr. Crawford. This is Mr. Patch speaking. I've just arrived unexpectedly and I don't know where to find her. Oh! Mr. Crawford sounded a bit taken aback. Why, I imagine she's at the armistice ball. I know she intended going, but I didn't think she'd leave so early. Where's the armistice ball? At the aster. Thanks. Anthony hung up sharply and rose. Who was Mr. Crawford? And who was it that was taking her to the ball? How long had this been going on? All these questions asked and answered themselves a dozen times, a dozen ways. His very proximity to her drove him half frantic. In a frenzy of suspicion he rushed here and there about the apartment, hunting for some sign of masculine occupation, opening the bathroom cupboard, searching feverishly through the bureau drawers. Then he found something that made him stop suddenly and sit down on one of the twin beds, the corners of his mouth drooping as though he were about to weep. There in the corner of her drawer, tied with a frail blue ribbon, were all the letters and telegrams he had written to her during the year past. He was suffused with happy and sentimental shame. I'm not fit to touch her. He cried aloud to the four walls. I'm not fit to touch her little hand. Nevertheless he went out to look for her. In the Aster lobby he was engulfed immediately in a crowd so thick as to make progress almost impossible. He asked the direction of the ballroom from half a dozen people before he could get a sober and intelligible answer. Eventually after a last long wait he checked his military overcoat in the hall. It was only nine but the dance was in full blast. The panorama was incredible. Women, women everywhere, girls gay with wine singing shrilly above the clamour of the dazzling confetti-covered throng. Girls set off by the uniforms of a dozen nations. Fat females collapsing without dignity upon the floor and retaining self-respect by shouting, Hurrah for the Allies! Three women with white hair dancing hand in hand around a sailor who revolved in a dizzying spin upon the floor clasping to his heart an empty bottle of champagne. Breathlessly Anthony scanned the dancers, scanned the muddled lines trailing in single file in and out among the tables, scanned the horn-blowing, kissing, coughing, laughing, drinking parties under the great full bosomed flags which leaned in glowing colour over the pageantry and the sound. Then he saw Gloria. She was sitting at a table for two directly across the room. Her dress was black and above it her animated face tinted with the most glamorous rose made, he thought, a spot of poignant beauty on the room. His heart leaped as though to a new music. He jostled his way toward her and called her name just as the grey eyes looked up and found him. For that instant, as their bodies met and melted, the world, the revel, the tumbling whimper of the music faded to an ecstatic monotone hushed as a song of bees. Oh my Gloria! he cried. Her kiss was a cool rill flowing from her heart. End of Book 3, Chapter 1, Part 2 of 2. Book 3, Chapter 2, Part 1 of 2 of The Beautiful and Damned. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Book 3, Chapter 2, A Matter of Aesthetics. Part 1 of 2. On the night when Anthony had left for Camp Hooker one year before, all that was left of the beautiful Gloria Gilbert, her shell, her young and lovely body, moved up the broad marble steps of the Grand Central Station, with the rhythm of the engine beating in her ears like a dream and out onto Vanderbilt Avenue, where the huge bulk of the Biltmore overhung the street and, down at its low gleaming entrance, sucked in the many-coloured opera cloaks of gorgeously dressed girls. For a moment she paused by the taxi stand and watched them, wondering that but a few years before she had been of their number ever setting out for a radiant somewhere, always just about to have that ultimate passionate adventure, for which the girls' cloaks were delicate and beautifully furred, for which their cheeks were painted and their hearts higher than the transitory dome of pleasure that would engulf them, coiffure, cloak and all. It was growing colder, and the men passing had flipped up the colours of their overcoats. This change was kind to her. It would have been kinder still had everything changed, weather, streets and people, and had she been whisked away to wake in some high, fresh-scented room, alone and stotesque within and without as in her virginal and colourful past. Inside the taxi cab she wept impotent tears, that she had not been happy with Anthony for over a year, mattered little. Recently his presence had been no more than what it would awaken her of that memorable June, the Anthony of late, irritable, weak and poor, could do no less than make her irritable in turn, and bored with everything except the fact that, in a highly imaginative and eloquent youth, they had come together in an ecstatic revel of emotion. Because of this mutually vivid memory she would have done more for Anthony than for any other human. So when she got into the taxi cab she wept passionately and wanted to call his name aloud. Miserable, lonesome as a forgotten child, she sat in the quiet apartment and wrote him a letter full of confused sentiment. I can almost look down the tracks and see you going, but without you, dearest, dearest, I can't see or hear or feel or think. Being apart, whatever has happened or will happen to us, is like begging for mercy from a storm, Anthony, it's like growing old. I want to kiss you so, in the back of your neck where your old black hair starts. Because I love you and whatever we do or say to each other or have done or have said, you've got to feel how much I do, how inanimate I am when you're gone. I can't even hate the damnable presence of people, those people in the station who haven't any right to live. I can't resent them even though they're dirtying up our world, because I'm engrossed in wanting you so. If you hated me, if you recovered with sores like a leper, if you ran away with another woman or starved me or beat me, how absurd this sounds, I'd still want you, I'd still love you. I know, my darling. It's late. I have all the windows open and the air outside is just as soft as spring yet, somehow, much more young and frail than spring. Why do they make spring a young girl? Why does that illusion dance and yodel its way for three months through the world's preposterous barrenness? Spring is a lean old plow horse, with its ribs showing. It's a pile of refuse in a field, parched by the sun and rain, to an ominous cleanliness. In a few hours you'll wake up, my darling, and you'll be miserable and disgusted with life. You'll be in Delaware or Carolina or somewhere and so unimportant. I don't believe there's anyone alive who can contemplate themselves as an impermanent institution, as a luxury or an unnecessary evil. Very few of the people who accentuate the futility of life remark the futility of themselves. Perhaps they think that, in proclaiming the evil of living, they somehow salvage their own worth from the ruin. But they don't, even you and I. Still I can see you. There's blue haze about the trees where you'll be passing, too beautiful to be predominant. No, the fallow squares of earth will be most frequent. They'll be along, beside the track, like dirty coarse brown sheets drying in the sun, alive, mechanical, abominable. Nature, slovenly old hag, has been sleeping in them with every old farmer or negro or immigrant who happened to covet her. So you see that now you've gone, I've written a letter all full of contempt and despair. And that just means that I love you, Anthony, with all there is to love in your gloria. When she had addressed the letter, she went to her twin bed and lay down upon it, clasping Anthony's pillow in her arms, as though by sheer force of emotion she could metamorphise it into his warm and living body. Two o'clock saw her dry-eyed, staring with steady, persistent grief into the darkness, remembering, unmercifully, blaming herself for a hundred fancied unkindnesses, making a likeness of Anthony akin to some martyred and transfigured Christ. For a time she thought of him as he, in his more sentimental moments, probably thought of himself. At five she was still awake. A mysterious grinding noise that went on every morning across the area away told her the hour. She heard an alarm-clock ring and saw a light make a yellow square on an illusory blank wall opposite. With the half-formed resolution of following him south immediately, her sorrow grew remote and unreal, and moved off from her as the dark moved westward. She fell asleep. When she awoke, the sight of the empty bed beside her brought a renewal of misery, dispelled shortly, however, by the inevitable callousness of the bright morning. Though she was not conscious of it, there was relief in eating breakfast without Anthony's tired and worried face opposite her. Now that she was alone, she lost all desire to complain about the food. She would change her breakfasts, she thought, have a lemonade and a tomato sandwich instead of the semperternal bacon and eggs and toast. Nonetheless, at noon, when she had called up several of her acquaintances, including the Marshall Muriel, and found each one engaged for lunch, she gave way to a quiet pity for herself and her loneliness. Curled on the bed with pencil and paper, she wrote Anthony another letter. Late in the afternoon arrived a special delivery, mailed from some small New Jersey town, and the familiarity of the phrasing, the almost audible undertone of worry and discontent, were so familiar that they comforted her. Who knew? Perhaps army discipline would harden Anthony and accustom him to the idea of work. She had immutable faith that the war would be over before he was called upon to fight, and meanwhile the suit would be won, and they could begin again, this time on a different basis. The first thing different would be that she would have a child. It was unbearable that she should be so utterly alone. It was a week before she could stay in the apartment with the probability of remaining dry-eyed. There seemed little in the city that was amusing. Muriel had been shifted to a hospital in New Jersey, from which she took a metropolitan holiday only every other week, and with this defection Gloria grew to realize how few were the friends she had made in all these years of New York. The men she knew were in the army. Men she knew? She had conceded vaguely to herself that all the men who had ever been in love with her were her friends. Each one of them had, at a certain considerable time, professed to value her favor above anything in life, but now, where were they? At least two were dead, half a dozen or more were married, the rest scattered from France to the Philippines. She wondered whether any of them thought of her, and how often, and in what respect. Most of them must still picture the little girl of seventeen or so, the adolescent siren of nine years before. The girls, too, were gone far afield. She had never been popular in school. She had been too beautiful, too lazy, not sufficiently conscious of being a farmover girl and a future wife and mother in perpetual capital letters. And girls who had never been kissed hinted with shocked expressions on their plain but not particularly wholesome faces that Gloria had. Then these girls had gone east or west or south, married, and become people, prophesying, if they prophesied about Gloria, that she would come to a bad end. Not knowing that no endings were bad, and that they, like her, were by no means the mistresses of their destinies. Gloria told over to herself the people who had visited them in the Grey House at Marietta. It had seemed at the time that they were always having company. She had indulged in an unspoken conviction that each guest was ever afterwards slightly indebted to her. They owed her a sort of moral ten dollars apiece, and, should she ever be in need, she might, so to speak, borrow from them this visionary currency. But they were gone, scattered like chaff, mysteriously and subtly vanished in essence or in fact. By Christmas Gloria's conviction that she should join Anthony had returned, no longer as a sudden emotion but as a recurrent need. She decided to write to him word of her coming, but postponed the announcement upon the advice of Mr. Haight, who expected almost weekly that the case was coming up for trial. One day, early in January, as she was walking on Fifth Avenue, bright now with uniforms, and hung with the flags of the virtuous nations, she met Rachel Barnes, whom she had not seen for nearly a year. Even Rachel, whom she had grown to dislike, was a relief from ennui, and together they went to the Ritz for tea. After a second cocktail they became enthusiastic. They liked each other. They talked about their husbands. Rachel, in that tone of public fame-glory with private reservations in which wives are want to speak. Rodman's abroad in the quartermaster corps, he's a captain, he was bound he would go, and he didn't think he could get into anything else. Anthony's in the infantry. The words in their relation to the cocktail gave Gloria a sort of glow. With each sip she approached a warm and comforting patriotism. By the way, said Rachel, half an hour later, as they were leaving, can't you come up to dinner tomorrow night? I'm having two awfully sweet officers who are just going overseas. I think we ought to do all we can to make it attractive for them. Gloria accepted gladly. She took down the address, recognizing by its number a fashionable apartment building on Park Avenue. It's been awfully good to have seen you, Rachel. It's been wonderful. I've wanted to. With these three sentences, a certain night in Marietta two summers before, when Anthony and Rachel had been unnecessarily attentive to each other, was forgiven. Gloria forgave Rachel, Rachel forgave Gloria. Also, it was forgiven that Rachel had been witness to the greatest disaster in the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Patch. Compromising with events, time moves along. The Wiles of Captain Collins The two officers were captains of the popular craft machine gunnery. At dinner they referred to themselves with conscious boredom as members of the Suicide Club. In those days every recondite branch of the service referred to itself as the Suicide Club. One of the captains, Rachel's captain, Gloria observed, was a tall, horsey man of thirty with a pleasant mustache and ugly teeth. The other, Captain Collins, was chubby, pink-faced, pink-faced and inclined to laugh with abandon every time he caught Gloria's eye. He took an immediate fancy to her, and throughout dinner showered her with inane compliments. With her second glass of champagne, Gloria decided that, for the first time in months, she was thoroughly enjoying herself. After dinner it was suggested that they all go somewhere and dance. The two officers supplied themselves with bottles of liquor from Rachel's sideboard, a law forbade service to the military. And so equipped, they went through innumerable foxtrots in several glittering caravanseries along Broadway, faithfully alternating partners, while Gloria became more and more uproarious and more and more amusing to the pink-faced captain, who seldom bothered to remove his genial smile at all. At eleven o'clock, to her great surprise, she was in the minority for staying out. The others wanted to return to Rachel's apartment to get some more liquor, they said. Gloria argued persistently that Captain Collins's flask was half full, she had just seen it. Then, catching Rachel's eye, she received an unmistakable wink. She deduced, confusingly, that her hostess wanted to get rid of the officers, and assented to being bundled into a taxi cab outside. Captain Wolfe sat on the left, with Rachel on his knees. Captain Collins sat in the middle, and as he settled himself, he slipped his arm about Gloria's shoulders. It rested there lifelessly for a moment, and then tightened like a vise. He leaned over her. You're awfully pretty, he whispered. Thank you kindly, sir. She was neither pleased nor annoyed. Before Anthony came, so many arms had done likewise that it had become little more than a gesture, sentimental but without significance. Up in Rachel's long front room, a low fire and two lamps shaded with orange silk gave all the light, so that the corners were full of deep insominal and shadows. The hostess, moving about in a dark-figured gown of loose chiffon, seemed to accentuate the already sensuous atmosphere. For a while they were all four together, tasting the sandwiches that waited on the tea table. Then Gloria found herself alone with Captain Collins on the fireside lounge. Rachel and Captain Wolfe had withdrawn to the other side of the room, where they were conversing in subdued voices. I wish you weren't married, said Collins, his face a ludicrous travesty of, in all seriousness. Why? She held out her glass to be filled with a highball. Don't drink any more, he urged her, frowning. Why not? You'd be nicer, if you didn't. Gloria caught suddenly the intended suggestion of the remark, the atmosphere he was attempting to create. She wanted to laugh, yet she realized that there was nothing to laugh at. She had been enjoying the evening, and she had no desire to go home. At the same time it hurt her pride to be flirted with on just that level. Pour me another drink, she insisted. Please, oh, don't be ridiculous. She cried in exasperation. Very well. He yielded with ill grace. Then his arm was about her again, and again she made no protest. But when his pink cheek came close, she leaned away. You're awfully sweet, he said, with an aimless air. She began to sing softly, wishing now that he would take down his arm. Suddenly her eye fell on an intimate scene across the room. Rachel and Captain Wolfe were engrossed in a long kiss. Gloria shivered slightly. She knew not why. Pink face approached again. You shouldn't look at them, he whispered. Almost immediately his other arm was around her. His breath was on her cheek. Again absurdity triumphed over disgust, and her laugh was a weapon that needed no edge of words. Oh, I thought you were a sport, he was saying. What's a sport? Why, a person that likes to—to—enjoy life. Is kissing you generally considered a joyful affair? They were interrupted as Rachel and Captain Wolfe appeared suddenly before them. It's late, Gloria, said Rachel. She was flushed and her hair was disheveled. You'd better stay here all night. For an instant Gloria thought the officers were being dismissed. Then she understood and, understanding, got to her feet as casually as she was able. Uncomprehendingly, Rachel continued, You can have the room just off this one. I can lend you everything you need. Collins's eyes implored her like a dog's. Captain Wolfe's arm had settled familiarly around Rachel's waist. They were waiting. But the lure of promiscuity, colourful, various, labyrinthine, and ever a little odourous in stale, had no call or promise for Gloria. Had she so desired, she would have remained without hesitation, without regret. As it was, she could face coolly the six hostile and offended eyes that followed her out into the hall with forced politeness and hollow words. He wasn't even sport enough to try to take me home, she thought in the taxi. And then with a quick surge of resentment, how utterly common. Gallantry In February she had an experience of quite a different sort. Tudor Baird, an ancient flame, a young man whom at one time she had fully intended to marry, came to New York by way of the Aviation Corps and called upon her. They went several times to the theatre and within a week, to her great enjoyment, he was as much in love with her as ever. Quite deliberately she brought it about, realising too late that she had done a mischief. He reached the point of sitting with her in miserable silence whenever they went out together. A scroll and keys man at Yale, he possessed the correct reticences of a good egg, the correct notions of chivalry and noblesse oblige. And, of course, but unfortunately, the correct biases and the correct lack of ideas. All those traits which Anthony had taught her to despise, but which, nevertheless, she rather admired. Unlike the majority of his type, she found that he was not a bore. He was handsome, witty in a light way, and when she was with him she felt that because of some quality he possessed, call it stupidity, loyalty, sentimentality, or something not quite as definite as any of the three, he would have done anything in his power to please her. He told her this, among other things, very correctly, and with a ponderous manliness that masked a real suffering. Loving him not at all, she grew sorry for him, and kissed him sentimentally one night because he was so charming, a relic of a vanishing generation which lived a priggish and graceful illusion, and was being replaced by less gallant fools. Afterward she was glad she had kissed him, for next day when his plane fell fifteen hundred feet at Miniola, a piece of a gasoline engine smashed through his heart. Gloria alone. When Mr. Haight told her that the trial would not take place until autumn, she decided that without telling Anthony she would go into the movies. When he saw her, successful, both histrionically and financially, when he saw that she could have her will of Joseph Blockman yielding nothing in return, he would lose his silly prejudices. She lay away half one night planning her career and enjoying her successes in anticipation, and the next morning she called up films par excellence. Mr. Blockman was in Europe. But the idea had gripped her so strongly this time that she decided to go the rounds of the moving picture employment agencies. As had so often been the case, her sense of smell worked against her good intentions. The employment agency smelt as though it had been dead a very long time. She waited five minutes inspecting her unprepossessing competitors. Then she walked briskly out into the farthest recesses of Central Park and remained so long that she caught a cold. She was trying to air the employment agency out of her walking suit. In the spring she began to gather from Anthony's letters, not from any one in particular, but from their cumulative effect, that he did not want her to come south. Curiously repeated excuses that seemed to haunt him by their very insufficiency occurred with Freudian regularity. He set them down in each letter as though he feared he had forgotten them the last time, as though it were desperately necessary to impress her with them, and the delusions of his letters with affectionate diminutives began to be mechanical and unspontaneous, almost as though, having completed the letter, he had looked it over and literally stuck them in, like epigrams in an Oscar Wilde play. She jumped to the solution, rejected it, was angry and depressed by turns. Finally she shut her mind to it proudly, and allowed an increasing coolness to creep into her end of the correspondence. Of late she had found a good deal to occupy her attention. Several aviators, whom she had met through Tudor Baird, came into New York to see her, and two other ancient bows turned up, stationed at Camp Dix. As these men were ordered overseas, they, so to speak, handed her down to their friends. But after another rather disagreeable experience with the potential Captain Collins, she made it plain that when anyone was introduced to her he should be under no misapprehension as to her status and personal intentions. When summer came she learned, like Anthony, to watch the officer's casualty list, taking a sort of melancholy pleasure in hearing of the death of someone with whom she had once danced a German and in identifying by name the younger brothers of former suitors, thinking, as the drive toward Paris progressed, that here at length went the world to inevitable and well-merited destruction. She was twenty-seven. Her birthday fled by, scarcely noticed. Years before it had frightened her when she became twenty. To some extent when she reached twenty-six. But now she looked in the glass with calm self-approval, seeing the British freshness of her complexion, and her figure boyish and slim as of old. She tried not to think of Anthony. It was as though she were writing to her stranger. She told her friends that he had been made a corporal, and was annoyed when they were politely unimpressed. One night she wept because she was sorry for him. Had he been even slightly responsive she would have gone to him without hesitation on the first train. Whatever he was doing he needed to be taken care of spiritually, and she felt that now she would be able to do even that. Recently, without his continual drain on her moral strength, she found herself wonderfully revived. Before he left she had been inclined through sheer association to brood on her wasted opportunities. Now she returned to her normal state of mind, strong, disdainful, existing each day for each day's worth. She bought a doll and dressed it. One week she wept over Ethan from. The next she reveled in some novels of gullsworthies whom she liked for his power of recreating, by spring in darkness, that illusion of young romantic love to which women look forever forward and forever back. In October Anthony's letters multiplied, became almost frantic, then suddenly ceased. For a worried month it needed all her powers of control to refrain from leaving immediately for Mississippi. Then a telegram told her that he had been in the hospital and that she could expect him in New York within ten days. Like a figure in a dream he came back into her life across the ballroom on that November evening. In all through the long hours that held familiar gladness she took him close to her breast, nursing an illusion of happiness and security she had not thought that she would know again. Discomforture of the Generals. After a week Anthony's regiment went back to the Mississippi camp to be discharged. The officers shut themselves up in the compartments on the Pullman cars and drank the whiskey they had bought in New York. And in the coaches the soldiers got as drunk as possible also and pretended that whenever the train stopped at a village that they were just returned from France where they had practically put an end to the German army. As they all wore overseas caps and claimed that they had not had time to have their gold service stripes sewed on, the yokelery of the seaboard were much impressed and asked them how they liked the trenches, to which they replied, oh boy, with great smacking of tongues and shaking of heads. Someone took a piece of chalk and scrawled on the side of the train, we won the war, now we're going home. And the officers laughed and let it stay. They were all getting what swagger they could out of this ignominious return. As they rumbled on toward camp Anthony was uneasy lest he should find Dot awaiting him patiently at the station. To his relief he neither saw nor heard anything of her, and thinking that were she still in town she would certainly attempt to communicate with him he concluded that she had gone, whether he neither knew nor cared. He wanted only to return to Gloria, Gloria reborn and wonderfully alive. When eventually he was discharged he left his company on the rear of a great truck with a crowd who had given tolerant almost sentimental cheers for their officers, especially for Captain Dunning. The Captain, on his part, had addressed them with tears in his eyes as to the pleasure, et cetera, and the work, et cetera, and time not wasted, et cetera, and duty, et cetera. It was very dull and human. Having given ear to it, Anthony, whose mind was freshened by his week in New York, renewed his deep loathing for the military profession and all it connoted. In their childish hearts two out of every three professional officers considered that wars were made for armies and not armies for wars. He rejoiced to see general and field officers writing desolately about the barren camp deprived of their commands. He rejoiced to hear the men in his company laugh scornfully at the inducements tender them to remain in the army. They were to attend schools. He knew what these schools were. Two days later he was with Gloria in New York. Another winter. Late one February afternoon Anthony came into the apartment and, groping through the little hall, pitch dark in the winter dust, found Gloria sitting by the window. She turned as he came in. What did Mr. Haight have to say? She asked listlessly. Nothing, he answered, usual thing, next month perhaps. She looked at him closely. Her ear attuned to his voice caught the slightest thickness in the dicillable. You've been drinking, she remarked dispassionately. Couple glasses? Oh. He yawned in the armchair and there was a moment's silence between them. Then she demanded suddenly, Did you go to Mr. Haight? Tell me the truth. No. He smiled weakly. As a matter of fact, I didn't have time. I thought you didn't go. He sent for you. I don't give a damn. I'm sick of waiting around his office. You'd think he was doing me a favour. He glanced at Gloria as though expecting moral support, but she had turned back to her contemplation of the dubious and unprepossessing out of doors. I feel rather weary of life today, he offered tentatively. Still she was silent. I met a fellow and we talked in the Biltmore Bar. The dusk had suddenly deepened, but neither of them made any move to turn on the lights. Lost in heaven knew what contemplation. They sat there until a flurry of snow drew a languid sigh from Gloria. What have you been doing? He asked, finding the silence oppressive. Reading a magazine, all full of idiotic articles by prosperous authors about how terrible it is for poor people to buy silk shirts, and while I was reading it I could think of nothing else except how I wanted a grey squirrel coat and how we can't afford one. Yes we can. Oh no. Oh yes. If you want a fur coat you can have one. Her voice coming through the dark held an implication of scorn. You mean we can sell another bond? If necessary. I don't want you to go without things. We have spent a lot though since I've been back. Oh shut up, she said in irritation. Why? Because I'm sick and tired of hearing you talk about what we've spent or what we've done. You came back two months ago, and we've been on some sort of a party practically every night since. We've both wanted to go out, and we've gone. Well, you haven't heard me complain, have you? But all you do is wine, wine, wine. I don't care anymore what we do or what becomes of us, and at least I'm consistent, but I will not tolerate your complaining and calamity howling. You're not very pleasant yourself sometimes, you know. I'm under no obligations to be. You're not making any attempt to make things different. But I am. Huh, seems to me I've heard that before. This morning you weren't going to touch another thing to drink until you'd gotten a position, and you didn't even have the spunk to go to Mr. Hate when he sent for you about the suit. Anthony got to his feet and switched on the lights. See here, he cried, blinking. I'm getting sick of that sharp tongue of yours. Well, what are you going to do about it? Do you think I'm particularly happy? He continued, ignoring her question. Do you think I don't know we're not living as we ought to? In an instant Gloria stood trembling beside him. I won't stand it, she burst out. I won't be lectured to. You and your suffering. You're just a pitiful weakling, and you always have been. They faced one another, idiotically, each of them unable to impress the other, each of them tremendously achingly bored. Then she went into the bedroom and shut the door behind her. His return had brought into the foreground all their pre-bellum exasperations. Prices had risen alarmingly, and in perverse ratio their income had shrunk to a little over half its original size. There had been the large retainer's fee to Mr. Haight. There were stocks bought at one hundred, now down to thirty and forty, and other investments that were not paying at all. During the previous spring Gloria had been given the alternative of leaving the apartment or signing a year's lease at two hundred and twenty-five a month. She had signed it. Inevitably, as the necessity for economy had increased, they found themselves as a pair quite unable to save. The old policy of prevarication was resorted to. Weary of their incapabilities, they chattered of what they would do—oh, to-morrow—of how they would stop going to parties, and of how Anthony would go to work. But when dark came down, Gloria, accustomed to an engagement every night, would feel the ancient restlessness scooping over her. She would stand in the doorway of the bedroom, chewing furiously at her fingers, and sometimes meeting Anthony's eyes as he glanced up from his book. Then the telephone, and her nerves would relax. She would answer it with ill-concealed eagerness. Someone was coming up, for just a few minutes, and, oh, the weariness of pretense, the appearance of the wine-table, the revival of their jaded spirits, and the awakening, like the midpoint of a sleepless night in which they moved. As the winter passed, with the march of the returning troops along Fifth Avenue, they became more and more aware that, since Anthony's return, their relations had entirely changed. After that reflowering of tenderness and passion, each of them had returned into some solitary dream, unshared by the other, and what endearments passed between them passed, it seemed, from empty heart to empty heart, echoing hollily the departure of what they knew at last was gone. Anthony had again made the rounds of the Metropolitan newspapers, and had again been refused encouragement by a motley of office boys, telephone girls, and city editors. The word was, we're keeping any vacancies open for our own men who are still in France. Then, late in March, his eye fell on an advertisement in the morning paper, and in consequence he found at last the semblance of an occupation. You can sell! Why not earn while you learn? Our salesmen make fifty to two hundred dollars weekly. They followed an address on Madison Avenue, and instructions to appear at one o'clock that afternoon. Gloria, glancing over his shoulder after one of their usual late breakfasts, saw him regarding it idly. Why don't you try it, she suggested. Oh, it's one of those crazy schemes. It might not be, at least it'd be experience. At her urging, he went at one o'clock to the appointed address, where he found himself one of a dense miscellany of men waiting in front of the door. They ranged from a messenger boy, evidently misusing his company's time, to an immemorial individual with a gnarled body and a gnarled cane. Some of the men were seedy, with sunken cheeks and puffy pink eyes, others were young, possibly still in high school. After a jostled fifteen minutes, during which they all eyed one another with apathetic suspicion, there appeared a smart young shepherd clad in a waistline suit, and wearing the manner of an assistant rector who herded them upstairs into a large room, which resembled a school room and contained innumerable desks. Here the prospective salesmen sat down, and again waited. After an interval, a platform at the end of the hall was clouded with half a dozen sober but sprightly men, who, with one exception, took seats in a semi-circle facing the audience. The exception was the man who seemed to the soberest, the most sprightly and the youngest of the lot, and who advanced to the front of the platform. The audience scrutinized him, hopefully. He was rather small, and rather pretty, with a commercial rather than the thespian sort of prettiness. He had straight, blonde, bushy brows, and eyes that were almost preposterously honest, and as he reached the edge of his rostrum, he seemed to throw these eyes out into the audience, simultaneously extending his arm with two fingers outstretched. Then, while he rocked himself to a state of balance, an expectant silence settled over the hall. With perfect assurance the young man had taken his listeners in hand, and his words, when they came, were steady and confident, and of the school of, straight from the shoulder. Men, he began, and paused. The word died with a prolonged echo at the end of the hall. The faces regarding him, hopefully, cynically, wearily, were alike arrested and grossed. Six hundred eyes were turned slightly upward, with an even graceless flow that reminded Anthony of the rolling of bowling balls. He launched himself into the sea of exposition. This bright and sunny morning, you picked up your favorite newspaper, and you found an advertisement which made the plain, unadorned statement that you could sell. That was all it said. It didn't say what, it didn't say how, it didn't say why. It just made one single, solitary assertion that you, and you, and you, business of pointing, could sell. Now, my job isn't to make a success of you, because every man is born a success. He makes himself a failure. It's not to teach you how to talk, because each man is a natural orator, and only makes himself a clam. My business is to tell you one thing in a way that will make you know it. It's to tell you that you, and you, and you, have the heritage of money and prosperity, waiting for you to come and claim it. At this point an Irishman of Saturnine appearance rose from his desk near the rear of the hall and went out. That man thinks he'll go look for it in the beer parlour around the corner, laughter. He won't find it there. Once upon a time I looked for it there myself, laughter. But that was before I did what every one of you men, no matter how young or how old, how poor or how rich— a faint ripple of satirical laughter— can do. It was before I found myself. Now I wonder if any of you men know what a heart talk is. A heart talk is a little book in which I started, about five years ago, to write down what I had discovered were the principal reasons for a man's failure and the principal reasons for a man's success. From John D. Rockefeller back to John D. Napoleon. Laughter. And before that, back in the days when Awell sold his birthright for a massive potage, there are now one hundred of these heart talks. Those of you who are sincere, who are interested in our proposition, above all who are dissatisfied with the way things are breaking for you at present, will be handed one to take home with you as you go out yonder door this afternoon. Now in my own pocket I have four letters just received concerning heart talks. These letters have names signed to them that are familiar in every household in the U.S.A. Listen to this one from Detroit. Dear Mr. Carlton, I want to order three thousand more copies of heart talks for distribution among my salesmen. They have done more for getting work out of them and than any bonus proposition ever considered. I read them myself constantly, and I desire to heartily congratulate you on getting at the roots of the biggest problem that faces our generation today, the problem of salesmanship. The rock bottom on which the country is founded is the problem of salesmanship, with many felicitations I am, yours very cordially, Henry W. Terrell. He brought the name out in three long booming triumphancies, pausing for it to produce its magical effect. Then he read two more letters, one from a manufacturer of vacuum cleaners, and one from the president of the great Northern Doiley Company. And now, he continued, I'm going to tell you in a few words what the proposition is that's going to make those of you who go into it in the right spirit. Simply put, it's this. Heart talks have been incorporated as a company. We're going to put these little pamphlets into the hands of every big business organization, every salesman, and every man who knows, I don't say things, I say knows that he can sell. We are offering some of the stock of the heart talks concerned upon the market, and in order that the distribution may be as wide as possible, and in order also that we can furnish a living, concrete, flesh and blood example of what salesmanship is, or rather what it may be, we're going to give those of you who are the real thing a chance to sell that stock. Now, I don't care what you've tried to sell before or how you've tried to sell it, it don't matter to me how old you are or how young you are, I only want to know two things. First, do you want success? And second, will you work for it? My name is Sammy Carlton, not Mr. Carlton, but just plain Sammy. I'm a regular no-nonsense man with no fancy frills about me. I want you to call me Sammy. Now, this is all I'm going to say to you today. Tomorrow, I want those of you who are thotted over and have read the copy of Heart Talks, which will be given to you at the door, to come back to the same room at the same time, then we'll go into the proposition further, and I'll explain to you what I found the principles of success to be. I'm going to make you feel that you and you and you can sell. Mr. Carlton's voice echoed for a moment through the hall, and then died away. To the stamping of many feet, Anthony was pushed and jostled with the crowd out of the room. End of Book 3, Chapter 2, Part 1 of 2